Translation of Compounds with the Meaning ‘warrior’ in “Beowulf”
The poem ‘Beowulf’, being an example of poetic creativity of the Anglo-Saxon period of English literature development, is of interest for linguists studying the process of linguistic transformation that takes place during interlingual translation. This article deals with the problem of translating A...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
2025-12-01
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| Series: | RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.rudn.ru/semiotics-semantics/article/viewFile/45166/25105 |
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| Summary: | The poem ‘Beowulf’, being an example of poetic creativity of the Anglo-Saxon period of English literature development, is of interest for linguists studying the process of linguistic transformation that takes place during interlingual translation. This article deals with the problem of translating Anglo-Saxon compounds with the meaning of ‘warrior’ in the poem ‘Beowulf’ into modern English. The Anglo-Saxon language is characterised by bicompound words, kennings and compounds, which in modern English do not always retain their structure and are replaced by a monosyllabic word close in meaning. The aim of the article is to analyse the translation of compounds by different translators, to study the linguistic means used in the author’s translations. A comparison of the translation of the basic and determinative components by different means is given. Special attention is paid to the examples of preserving the two-component structure, compounds with the subject noun as determiner, the variants of translation with the use of calques, with the transfer of evaluative connotation are analysed. The characteristic features of translation of a compound with replacement by an attributive construction are singled out and described. On the basis of the analysis, frequent basic components forming five or more compounds and productive determiners, as well as situational compounds are identified. As a result, it is found that the two-joint compound model is replaced by a one-joint word in most cases, the two-joint model with the use of calque is retained for compounds with semantic connection on the basis of subject possession, and the model with a prepositional compound is also used. The article analyses the translations of compounds made by five translators and summarises the features of the translators’ choice. |
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| ISSN: | 2313-2299 2411-1236 |